07/18/2000

New HowTo: How to Create a Site List Page. You can have a page that lists all the sites on your server. This list can be searchable if you want.

The HowTo above describes how to use the new hostingSuite.listSites macro.

Note: whenever we release a new macro, quitting and re-starting Frontier will make it legal, since built-in macros are made legal at startup. Obviously, a better way to do this is a good idea, so you don't have to quit and re-start Frontier. It should be automatic when you update.

One of my favorite things to say around the house is "it's the rubber match of a three-game set."

Tonight is the rubber match of a three-game set between the Mariners and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Chief will make his third start since returning from the disabled list. Go Freddy!

There's something beautiful about the quiet rumble of an airplane passing far above as you're lying in bed falling asleep. It says: some people are wide awake, even as you doze off, not only keeping the world going but doing the hard jobs, eyes open, in radio contact with the ground. It says: it's okay to sleep now.

Why do I say it's beautiful rather than simply reassuring? Because it is. If you understand this beauty, you understand one of the fundamental beauties of the modern world -- which is not a bad world, since we have these great people who keep the jets flying, the networks up, the food on the roads.

Listening to the Specials -- "Free Nelson Mandela." How nice to hear this song again and know that Mandela has been freed.

21 years of captivity
Are you so blind that you cannot see?
Are you so deaf that you cannot hear?
Are you so dumb that you cannot speak?

Okay, the lyrics aren't great, but I didn't know it at the time. And they worked.

I'm not saying that the song had much to do with freeing Nelson Mandela, but it had a lot to do with letting kids like me (a kid at the time) know that there's a wider world outside the local mall, and that worrying about finals or the girl who does or doesn't like you isn't exactly irrelevant, but small potatoes compared to what's on Nelson Mandela's mind.

Another '80s song I like in a similar way: the English Beat's "Stand Down Margaret." (Margaret being Margaret Thatcher.)

So Margaret Thatcher isn't the evil dictator of Airstrip One anymore. Nelson Mandela is free. But plenty of other people are still in jail.